Back to Basics – Part Five – Honesty over Buzz words

            As we reach the end of our Back to Basics series, we will try to focus on our current political system with all its peculiarities. At first glance, simply observing the activities in Congress and the White House, it appears that somebody has quietly changed the opening words of the United States Constitution from the original “We the People of the United States” to “We the Politicians of the United States”.

            While this is, of course, not an official change, one cannot help and wonder what makes them act that way. Getting elected seems to change these individuals and they grow a much stronger sense of arrogance and develop a huge lust for power. And we do not just mean the current crop of ‘leaders’, the Democrats. The Republicans were in charge for many years before them and they acted the same way. And while the Republicans were taught a lesson or two since the 2006 mid-term Congressional elections, we suspect that the Democrats might expect similar scrutiny and appropriate responses and action by the electorate in the future.

            Even for those people who watch Congress closely, it is definitely getting harder to identify those few elected officials who stay true to their character when they were first elected. Honesty and truth are easily substituted with double-talk and evasive responses. This is coupled with a sudden affection for political buzzwords that apparently sound convincing to many. Almost all members of Congress, whether in the House or the Senate use the line ‘The American people want this…..or that’. These statements are usually based on recent poll results when they correspond to a politician’s agenda or point of view. Contrarily, what do these politicians do when public polling is starkly, many times overwhelmingly different? They ignore the polls! How convenient for them, yet they get away with it due to the lack of interest by their constituents.

            It is therefore no wonder that politicians are generally not held in very high esteem by the public and are on occasion listed behind used car salesmen when it comes to favorability. Last year, Congress ranked in the single digits for a while in public opinion polls and yet, most incumbents got re-elected. It should therefore be no surprise that it is genuinely shameful how our country is governed these days and while everybody is complaining and unhappy, there is apparently nothing we can do about it, right? Wrong!

            We the People of the United States should demand honesty, integrity and accountability from our elected officials by rejecting buzzwords, double-talk and evasive statements! When a liberal politician gets elected, he or she should act accordingly and similarly, the same holds true for Conservatives. And those politicians who run either as Democrats or Republicans but then vote as so called independents (moderates) should not be re-elected ever. Let them run as Independents the next time. Let us be as clear as we can be, we have principally nothing against these individuals. What we definitely oppose is when they turn away from their campaign promises and vote whichever way they want to. That is a true betrayal of the electorate and should most certainly not be rewarded with re-election.

            Since we have previously defined what Conservative and Liberal principles are, should we not ask every candidate where he or she stands on these principles before we pay attention to the campaign promises? And simply demand clear answers with examples from them? If they want to cherry pick between the twelve principles, call them what they are: Moderates or independents since their value system is obviously somewhat unclear and skewed at best or maybe even foggy. If we accept the standard whereby the person with the most votes in an election (with the exception of the Presidential elections), wins, then at least a majority of his or her constituents should be properly represented. That way, the elected official can also be monitored by the votes taken by him/her. An informed constituency could then decide a few years later whether or not to give the nod again to that person.

            And the one thing that could be very helpful is an objective news media who reports honestly what votes a politician makes. That would be immensely helpful to constituencies across the country and make our government more open and accountable to us, the people. Unfortunately, we have just stated here several almost unachievable goals: The media is biased, politicians are not honest and accountable and do not live by their promises and commitments made during campaign seasons. Trying to change the tone of discussions to a certain level of honesty, civility and respectfulness among politicians will be very hard if not impossible to achieve. And we can only blame ourselves for this, we let it happen. We have sadly allowed them to change our most important founding document, our Constitution to be changed without our consent from “We the people of the United States” to “We the Politicians of the United States.” 

            The major reason for this is the ignorance on the part of an ever larger growing group of voters in this country. They simply do not care, they seldom even vote! How else do we account for 40 to 55 percent voter turnout at elections? People do not pay the appropriate attention nor do they seem to care about what our elected officials do in Washington or for that matter on the State levels as well. This ignorance is like a cancer that seems to grow and grow and we know what happens when cancers grow; something will eventually die. Let us hope and pray that it is not too late for our great country.